Coalition climbdowns, u-turns and row backs

Margaret Thatcher once made a virtue of her refusal to climb down when she
said "the lady's not for turning", but as her successors in the
Coalition announce their latest volte-face, here is the full list of
government u-turns:

George Osborne controversially proposed in the Budget that any food served above ambient temperature would be taxed at 20% to address an "anomaly" in the system but the plan sparked protests from bakeries and claims that the levy would hit millions of working class Britons who enjoyed pasties and pies for lunch.

The backlash against the tax even saw a tabloid newspaper hire an actress dressed as Marie Antoinette to follow the Chancellor in an attempt to demand a rethink.

Mr Osborne has now written to Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury select committee, to announce he was backing down.

Last December, David Cameron was lionised by Eurosceptic Tory MPs when he vetoed a new EU treaty to deepen further fiscal union among eurozone countries but they later accused him of "appeasing" his deputy Nick Clegg by circumventing the move.

The Prime Minister had pledged to stop the eurozone using the European courts and Brussels institutions to uphold its own, breakaway fiscal pact being set up outside the EU treaty but later dropped the threat during negotiations.

It was claimed that the climbdown rendered the veto ineffective while one MP warned of the danger of Mr Cameron "waving the white flag".

Further Coalition tensions forced a re-think on a controversial Government-commissioned report by venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft on employment law reform, which called for "compulsory no-fault dismissal" - allowing businesses to dismiss unproductive workers without explanation by simply offering a redundancy payment.

The proposal was rejected by Business Secretary Vince Cable, who described it as "complete nonsense".

David Cameron was also accused of suppressing key recommendations in the report that warned the Colaition's family-friendly policies would undermine Britain's economic recovery.

Earlier this month, the Government announced a major retreat over aircraft for the Royal Navy's new carriers, abandoning plans to buy the conventional take-off verson of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

It reversed one of the central decisions in the Coalition's controversial defence review.

The U-turn, announced by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, is expected to result in hundreds of millions of pounds in savings, but led to accusaations of a climbdown driven by financial miscalculation.

Last June, David Cameron ordered Kenneth Clarke to scrap plans to let criminals who plead guilty to have their sentences halved after they sparked an outcry.

Mr Clarke had caused controversy by announcing that an early guilty plea would result in a 50% sentence reduction, including for rapists, as part of plans to make savings in the Ministry of Justice budget.

After crisis talks with Mr Cameron, rapists were excluded from the plan, but after a weekend of wrangling, the Prime Minister announced that no criminal would be able to get their sentence reduced in that way.

Another U-turn last year came when Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman's plans to sell off England's publicly-owned forests were dropped after opponents including Tory backbenchers, environmentalists, and the Archbishop of Canterbury mounted a backlash.

The policy, announced on January 17, was gone by February 17, when Mrs Spelman was forced to admit to the Commons: "We got this one wrong."

A day earlier, David Cameron had embarrassed her by frankly admitting he was not happy with the policy - after more than 500,000 people signed an online petition protesting about the move.

Last October, thousands of women who would have been heavily penalised by a planned increase in the state retirement age were reprieved after a Coalition climbdown.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith announced that women who would have seen a two-year increase to their state pension age would have their wait reduced to 18 months, following pressure from pensions campaigners and women's groups.

Mr Duncan Smith brokered the deal with the Treasury, at a time when David Cameron was said to be pursuing a series of policies designed to appeal to women.

In November 2010, ministers quietly shelved a pledge to grant anonymity to rape defendants after admitting there was no evidence to establish what impact it would have.

The plans had been announced following a spate of cases in which men were falsely accused of rape but they sparked outrage among legal experts and women's groupd and the Government was forced into the embarrassing climbdown.

There were concerns that anonymity would prevent further victims of a defendant coming forward - particularly following the case of London taxi rapist John Worboys, suspected of attacking 100 women. Many had initially had their complaints dismissed by police but came forward after publicity about his arrest.

In the same month, David Cameron backed down following criticism of his decision to employ his personal photographer Andrew Parsons and filmmaker Nicky Woodhouse on the public payroll as civil servants paid by the taxpayer.

Mr Cameron bowed to criticism and decided that the two would return to work for the Conservative Party, which had previously employed them.

It came just a day after the Prime Minister had publicly defended the decision to put Mr Parsons on the public payroll as a cost-saving measure.

In December 2010, the Government promised to continue funding a scheme which provides free books for children, following a backlash from authors over plans to scrap state support.

The U-turn followed criticism from a number of well-known writers including Philip Pullman and Sir Andrew Motion, who had condemned the Colaition's plans to withdraw funding from the Bookstart scheme as "wanton destruction" and an act of "gross cultural vandalism".

Booktrust, the charity which runs Bookstart, providing a package of books to parents when their babies are born with more as the children grow older, had been told in the week before Christmas that it would lose its entire £13 million grant in England.

Ministers announced in January last year that the £27 million-a-year Financial Inclusion Fund, which paid for specialist advisers to help sick or vulnerable people who became trapped in serious debt, would be scrapped.

But a month later the Government found the money to continue the service for another 12 months.

The fund pays for about 500 specialist debt advisers in England and Wales, who help 100,000 people with complex cases each year, the BBC reported.

Planned cuts to the BBC World Service were partly reversed when Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that an extra £2.2 million a year was being allocated to shore up the service's Arabic service, in June last year.

Huge cuts had been announced earlier in the year, resulting in a backlash from politicians from all sides.

A Whitehall official was disciplined after describing the reverse as a "massive U-turn" on the Foreign Office website.

Plans to do away with some benefit payments to disabled people living in care homes were dropped.

Ministers had planned to axe the "mobility" part of the Disability Living Allowance - worth £51-a-week - for those in residential care, in a move affecting up to 80,000 people.

It argued that councils' contracts with care homes should cover residents' mobility needs but charities and campaigners said the payment was a lifeline that helped people visit family and friends and attend doctors' appoinments. Work and Pensions minister Maria Miller told MPs last December that the plans had been dropped, the BBC reported.

Last November, Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke announced that he was saving the much-criticised quango responsible for youth justice.

Plans to abolish the Youth Justice Board were abandoned amid fears the Government faced a humiliating defeat by peers.

The YJB had been in line for the axe under the so-called "bonfire of the quangos". The body, which oversees the management of young offenders, had been criticised as ineffective, expensive and overly bureaucratic.

In the same month, Mr Clarke abandoned controversial plans to ditch the post of chief coroner - amid heavy opposition from the Royal British Legion.

The move averted a likely rebellion when the planned changes came before the House of Lords.

The Legion had conducted a year-long campaign to save the post, which was introduced by Labour to streamline inquests and make it easier and quicker for families of troops killed in action to find out how they died.

Mr Clarke was involved in another U-turn last October when it was announced that a mandatory minimum four-month prison sentence for 16- and 17-year-olds found guilty of "aggravated" knife offences would be introduced.

It came just days after the Justice Secretary had made clear his personal opposition to the use of mandatory sentences at a hearing of the Commons home affairs committee, the Guardian reported.

Mr Clarke was reported to have repeatedly clashed behind the scenes with Home Secretary Theresa May over the issue.

It followed a manifesto promise that everyone caught carrying a knife would be jailed, which was ditched over the cost of locking up thousands more offenders a year.

In November 2010, a scheme to give police more powers to remove perpetrators of domestic violence from the family home was saved after complaints that plans to scrap it would worsen the plight of victims of the abuse.

It had emerged earlier in the year that Home Secretary Theresa May intended to halt the plans to create Domestic Violence Protection Orders, which give enable officers to take instant action against offenders.

She told charities she had taken the decision to save money and because of problems with the legislation to set up the orders, but after protests she ordered a fresh review and changed her mind, The Independent reported.

Michael Gove signalled a climb down earlier this month on "no notice" school inspections after claims that Ofsted was adopting "Spanish Inquisition" tactics.

Snap inspections, in which inspectors turn up at the school gates unannounced, were due to start in September, and Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, argued that they were necessary to give parents a true picture of what was going on in schools.

But Mr Gove said teachers deserved to be warned of an impending visit.

The Government pledged in March to grant tax breaks to the computer games industry, in a U-turn on a decision less than two years ago to strip the sector of them.

It followed a campaign for tax relief by developers, over a number of years, to help staunch a brain drain to countries such as Canada, which offer generous financial concessions, the Financial Times reported.

In March 2010, Labour promised the sector tax relief similar to that given to the film industry, but it was scrapped two months later after the Coalition came to power.

But after fresh evidence that waiting times were creeping up, Mr Lansley imposed an extra treatment directive on the NHS, warning that no more than 8% of patients waiting at any one time would be allowed to have their treatments delayed by 18 weeks or more, the Guardian reported.

In December, ministers were accused of watering down proposals under which MPs guilty of serious wrongdoing could lose their seats if 10% of voters in their constituencies signed a petition to "recall" them.

The plans tighten up current rules, which allow MPs to keep their seats unless they are jailed for more than a year, but Labour said they were weakened by the fact that people would not be allowed to order a recall petition themselves.

Instead, such a petition would need to be triggered by a vote in the House of Commons or by an MP being sentenced to prison for 12 months or less.

Plans to impose a cap on donations to charities were shelved following an outcry from philanthropists and charities.

The cap - limiting relief at £50,000 or 25% of income - was proposed in Mr Osborne's March 21 Budget but sparked massive protests from the charitable sector which claimed it would lose a significant proportion of its income.

The about-turn is likely to cost the Gocvernment between £50million and £100million.

33. Petrol duty

George Osborne scrapped a 3p rise in fuel duty due in August in a £550 million Budget U-turn.

The Chancellor had been under pressure to abandon the planned rise in fuel prices as household incomes are squeezed by the economic slowdown.

The announcement, made in the House of Commons during a regular session of Treasury questions, surprised many MPs and came hours after Labour had called for the rise to be scrapped.